Re: If you could design a $300 homecomputer today, what would you choose?

[bmeyer@cs.monash.edu.au]

spike1@freenet.co.uk writes:

>Besides that, a computer without a ROM is just a dead hunk of silicon.
>Fine, the CPU will work, the memory will work, but without a little peice of
>code in ROM to tell it what to do at power on, where does it get the
>instructions to deal with the network or hard drive?

>Does this person think the hard drive just automatically squirts data into
>the CPU without any instructions from the CPU whatsoever?

The scary part is that this would be trivial to do these days. If the
self-initialization procedure of the Busmaster-DMA IDE controller
simply included a "read one block from the disk into memory location
0" phase, you wouldn't really need any ROM. Just keep the CPU reset
line active until the IDE controller is done. Not that I'd want such a
system --- I don't like the idea of catastrophic hard drive failure in
the first place, but this would give a whole new meaning to the term....

Bernie

-- 
It is easier to make war than to make peace
Georges Clemenceau
French Prime Minister 1906-09
Verdun, 20 July 1919